I was just listening to an interesting podcast on the way to work – Public Speaker Quick and Dirty Tips. This is Lisa B. Marshall’s ongoing blog and podcast that helps people deliver better presentations, improve their public speaking and communicate better overall.
The tips from this particular episode are great and very Web 2.0. For example, she recommends that presenters encourage attendees to take notes via Twitter so that their associates and followers can benefit (very viral). There are multiple benefits for all involved. The speaker enjoys more exposure. The audience gains improved retention (research supports that note taking improves retention). And, a collaborative environment is formed as everyone tweets and uses hash tags to follow along. Summaries and specific notes can be easily copied and pasted into other capture tools. Plus, the streams are searchable on search.twitter.com or organized via Twubs or Twitterfall.
I highly recommend you check this stuff out.
Do you use other tools when presenting? If so, please comment below about your tips and recommendations.
Are you a freelance copywriter, marketing creative, artist/designer, social media marketer, SEO specialist, content developer or Web developer? Now’s the time to understand why and how your power is vaporizing.
If you’re a creative professional, you may have noticed a bothersome trend. In an effort to reduce expenses, clients are getting creative with the ways they deconstruct projects, bid them out and re-assemble the final product.
As a result, some of your work is becoming commoditized, broken into pieces and performed by someone other than you. There are lower-cost, dubious-value graphic artists, Web designers, social media marketers, SEO specialists, content developers, programmers, freelance writers and others waiting in the wings to snap up pieces of projects.
I’m not arguing that this is a particularly intelligent, productive or encouraging trend. I’m just saying that it’s happening in a number of settings, and, in many cases, you’re complicit. Yes you.
Let me discuss a few examples to illustrate my point.
Deconstruction and the Road to Mediocrity
Software developers used to scope, design and test a piece code from start to finish. That’s not always the case nowadays. Outsourced, off-shore software testing is becoming more and more common. Specialized shops that test applications and the platforms they run on (like testing a new Web app on every conceivable phone, OS and browser combination) eliminate this task from a typical coder’s project. There’s a company in Austin, Texas that’s doing this with great success. Think of it as global specialization – where the “assembly line” is decoupled, sent to multiple specialists, then reassembled before launch.
You may have noticed the SEO copywriting trend, as well. For better or worse, companies are farming out articles to writing sweat shops and instructing them to assemble articles that are optimized for specific keywords (including headline and subhead instructions for keyword repetition). Then they send the completed article to a professional writer for editing, fact checking and re-writing.
As a professional writer, I find the practice ludicrous. It’s a process that’s flawed, spammy and basically ass-backwards. But I can’t deny that it’s happening. Shameful admission: one of my clients in Eastern Europe pays me to write headlines and subheads for articles they’ve developed (they identify the keywords they need highlighted, and I try to make it work). Some of the articles are professionally written and some are atrocious. I flag the bad ones and have them re-write them – by myself or another professional writer.
The trend is similar to the software development one. Publishers are attempting to decouple production and then reassemble the pieces. OnDemand Media’s Pluck is one example of this kind of low-cost, assembly line publishing.
With these types of approaches, some value is lost (maybe not so much with the software development example). You may have seen similar trends with your projects. Does the following sound familiar? A client asks you to produce a site, some graphic art or some copy that’s just like “competitor X’s site.” The marketing director identifies someone else’s work that they like, and they encourage you to paraphrase, emulate or copy it. “Just make it like theirs, ‘borrow’ from it and you [as the creative] won’t have to do so much work,” they say. The result is unoriginal copy or design. My advice is strap on your Pumas and run away from these clients as fast as you can.
The point is, you can see, taste and smell the loss of value in these types of projects. Think about all those India-looking templated sites out there. They’re sterile. You know them when you see them. The treatments are flat, the colors predictable, and the layouts pure boilerplate. Some are worse than others, of course. There are, however, some nice WordPress templates that are produced by very talented designers and coders (and SquareSpace ones and Tumblr.. many others, I’m sure).
Similar problems occur when people take short cuts with photography. How about those bland “business people at work photos?” Earnest looking professionals glare into the lens. They wear trendy blue and khaki, and they always seem to be in these scrubbed, gleaming Formica white rooms. There are dozens of them on iStockPhoto, and they pop up all over the Web. Anyone can get that stuff. Anyone can produce it. It’s a commodity.
Your Talent and Real-Time Creativity is Your Trump Card
So your career is under attack. Every day sub-contractors attempt to deconstruct creative work and farm pieces of it out. Seth Godin talks about this in his book Linchpin. In a previous era, the strategy was applied to automobile construction, for example. Henry Ford developed detailed assembly processes that could be carried out by very specialized, low-skilled laborers along the line. These days creative work can be made into an assembly line without borders… without a building.
Where does that leave you? It’s easy, really. You scamper back to value. You focus on originality and core competency. Your creative work, your artistry is what wins. You can beat a monkey on a typewriter. Your brilliance in the here and now beats any templated mash-up that a sweat shop can produce. That’s what brings the real dough. That’s what wins today’s contracts.
The companies and clients that don’t want that type of talent are settling for mediocrity. They will be lost in the sea of noise. Their ads will not stand out, their white papers will not be downloaded, and people will land on their sites and get that ‘oh this was designed by low-level goons in Eastern Europe’ feeling.
So, if you’re a designer you need to be the one who pays attention to typography, usability, color choice and very specific business requirements. You have to listen. And, you have to find the clients who communicate their uniqueness, their goals and their fears directly to you. Incorporate that into your designs, then collaborate with the Web development team, the writer, the photographer. Don’t be afraid to work with difficult people. Don’t be afraid to challenge your client. Argue with them (not argumentatively but in a Socratic way) with the fears, benefits, goals and aspirations of the company in mind.
If you’re a blogger or a ghost writer for blogs, stop regurgitating the messages of others. Stop chasing the link deals and trying to spam your way into Digg mentions, StumbleUpons, etc. Promote your best, most unique ideas – even if it means taking a day or week off. Yes, you need to produce content consistently. . but you’ve got to rise above the noise and say something useful and unique each time you publish. Or else.. your days are numbered.
Another Warning: Legitimate Technology Trends Will Strip You Naked
This should probably be another article.. but, heck, I’m going to put it in here, because it closely parallels the “deconstruction” trend.
If you’re a marketer, you need to realize that subjective, off-the-cuff analysis of markets is a vanishing practice. Creative, “gee I like this, let’s run with it” moments are gone. David Ogilvy and Claude Hopkins did their best to kill it off, but it’s still the fall back position for lazy marketing departments.
Here’s where technology is taking a bite out of marketing departments. The following trends are eating away at staid practices:
Real-time analytics from real-time search like Twitter, Facebook and Google real-time results
Web scraping (real-time and sophisticated, in-depth, behind-the-Flash, behind-the-login-page scraping)
Twitter testing and AdWords testing of titles, subheads and concepts
Analytics beats any whim or subjective position you have. Yes – I know – if you’re creating art, then you can be content with your own subjective analysis. But, it’s rare that those of us in the business world can produce art without being accountable for results. At some point, you have to sell something (even artists need to fill galleries).
So these five techie developments show us what sells, what gets clicked, what’s working, what the crowds think. Testing (Claude Hopkins, Ogilvy- style) is more relevant than ever!
One of the buzz phrases going around marketing circles is contextual sentiment. This is what Facebook is up to with their “Like” buttons all over the Web. Fact is, you could do this with some sophisticated software previously. If you run scraped keyword streams from Twitter or Facebook through an sentiment analysis tool, you can see all kinds of actionable information. For example, let’s say you launch a new soda flavor. You can quickly understand consumer sentiment by monitoring channels like Twitter and Facebook. At the root, it’s the transformation of unstructured data into actionable information. It can be used for all kinds of scenarios – public relations troubleshooting, customer service, R&D, polling/sampling opinion (without the focus group), product development and more.
Big brands are already integrating this “social media” sampling technique into their Business Intelligence (BI) solutions. One of the big benefits is that they get a clear indication of sentiment and the “reality on the streets.” In the past, they had to rely on focus groups with preconceptions and gamed reporting from their own internal departments (sales, finance, product development, etc.).
Bringing it All Back Around to You – The Creative
Creatives in every line of work – Web development, art, writing, publishing, etc. – need to consider these trends carefully. From my perspective this trend looks like a boon to creatives. But, to many organizations, it could mean that some of their services will go away. You can’t consult, for example, if your consulting guidance is based on premises that are counter to factual Web analytics. You may have to integrate these new technologies into your offerings.
How is it a boon? Creative matters even more today than ever before. People need you to test out ideas, push them out of their comfort zones and try new things. Companies need to round up whatever data and research exists then hand off projects to creatives that get it. Then you test… then you commit to what works. That’s a good recipe.
What’s become a commodity is the big agency’s powerful research and testing groups. They’ll be moving to new technologies and techniques. But these new methods should be fairly low cost. You may not need an army of people to pull it off. And as information becomes more available at a lower cost, you’ll see small agile creative firms making moves.
Some Extended Thoughts
Everyone has access to this now. This new world is here. Soooooo….
Tips, info and tools are commodities unless they’re strikingly original
Pricing for boilerplate, templated or paraphrased/hi-jacked content and design is being ground down to zero. It’s a race to the bottom. That work is going overseas, or it’s going to the lowest common denominator companies.
Analytics (real-time) are showing companies who are willing to put in the sweat and the money exactly what’s going on with their products, services, brands, competitors, customer service, market perception… everything.
The information you have at your fingertips – your information tool box – is becoming irrelevant. There’s plenty of free information out there that describes what you know, best practices, tips, tools, strategies and so forth. That stuff is being commoditized. Dan Pink goes into this in detail in his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. “McKinsey & Co. estimates that in the United States, only 30% of job growth now comes from algorithmic work, while 70% comes from heuristic work,” writes Pink. (That algorithmic work is the non-creative stuff – the process work that can be duplicated in far flung locations.) “A key reason routine work can be outsourced or automated; artistic, empathic, non-routine, work generally cannot.”
Experience matters. Value matters. A creative, original filter matters.
What to Do? – Creatives, Get Back to Basics!
How do you win in this wild new world of shifting marketing and production trends? You focus on the key differentiators. Seth Godin talks about this a lot in Linchpin. You’ve got to continue to develop strong relationships. Stellar customer service, a sparkling attitude, personality, and your underlying creativity and uniqueness are the keys. Execution wins business as well – think about speed of execution, shipping on time/on deadline, and delivering a consistent, quality product. Of course you need to deliver value, meaning quality, differentiation and uniqueness, mind-boggling star power, and ’something extra.’
In short, you need to become more remarkable now.
What do you think about this discussion and these trends? Are you seeing the same things I’m seeing? If so, what are your strategies for combating these trends or adapting to them? Am I delusional or off-base here? Please comment below.
And they heard two friends.. and so on, and so on..
Search Engine Land recently ran an short article posing the question: Is Trust in Social Media Dying? It’s a quick statistical look at the dip in trust across social networks.. and the problem seems to be “marketing.”
I’d like to take their analysis a little further.
Yes marketing messages have infiltrated every nook and cranny of social media networks (whether that’s apps that friends recommend you get, groups they want you to join, or games they’d like you to play). Yes – the proliferation of acquaintances rather than real, trusted friends is part of the problem. Everyone seems to think they’re a micro-business (or some kind of eBay/e-commerce part-timer).
From my vantage point, the extended issue involves a re-introduction of traditional marketing methods on an organic medium. What do I mean by that? Here’s the simple version: People are attempting to force old methods – like multi-level marketing techniques, aggressive networking and referrals, and spammy recommendations that lead to affiliate links – onto the new social channels, and it’s not working.
Couple this phenomenon with the fact that noise levels are at all time highs, and you’ve got distrust. Social media was supposed to cut down noise after all. Your trusted group was supposed to help you filter out the noise. Yet people have been shooting themselves in the feet because they treated “friending” as a gold rush scenario. Collecting followers does not lead to valuable information exchanges.
So what do you do to gain back that trust and make your social networks work for you?
1. Delete spammy acquaintances from your personal social media networks (use a tool like Twitter Karma, for example).
2. Participate with authenticity – send out the messages and information that you’d like to see coming back your way. This is another karma play of sorts. You get what you give – it’s that simple.
3. If you’re using Social Media Marketing (SMM) for business, start acting like an artist (ask Seth Godin about this – or read his Linchpin Book). And I don’t mean acting as in faking. I mean acting as in action. Create something remarkable, give gifts, push through to make it better, and connect people in meaningful ways.
4. Tell the truth. Stop saying your feet hurt so you can score a free pair of shoes (like the Timberland guy did on Twitter). Those days are over. That was yesterday’s creative PR move. Write honest reviews of products. And, treat your product reviews as a niche business. Huh? Yes – pick a tight little corner of the world and dedicate your reviewing resources to that (foi gras, 1-inch heels, gerbil racing, nudist party planning, the worst selling products on Amazon, beard growth tips, whatever). Who knows, some day some company might want to advertise on your site and tap your network.
5. Connect offline. Go to tweet-ups, meet your friends in person (heck, use something like Gowalla or FourSquare to make it happen), and talk about the ideas you’ve been sharing online. There is no substitute for social contact (faces are amazing things), and the serendipity of discussion often reveals precious insights because it’s not premeditated (like a Tweet or FB post). Get out there an blurt in the real world.
These tips should help you filter out a lot of noise and get you back to the genuine, productive, value-rich conversations that social media is so good at cultivating.
If you do it right you don’t have to sweat this declining trust trend.
Critical conversations have moved away from email in recent years. I was thinking about this because I recently exchanged business cards with a woman and immediately emailed her my contact info. These kinds of email introductions used to be followed up happily and quickly that day or within hours/minutes.
Not anymore. Days go by. Inboxes are too full. Spam filters send legitimate emails off the radar screen. It sucks, but it’s true.
So where have these crucial conversations gone?
Back to the phone – this is good for a number of reasons, and I’ve personally seen this occurring in my own business.
To SMS – Whether your contacts are close friends or important business associates, text messages seem to get much more attention these days. It’s the first thing people check, wherever they are and whatever time it is.
Facebook, Linked-In and Twitter (for some people) – I’ve had entire business conversations with people within Linked-In and Facebook.. the FB one was a friend already, however. These tools allow people to strategically filter their discussions by friend groups.
In person – Still the best way to discuss business.
Via Skype, IM, Chat and so forth – This could include a Web cam or HD conferencing. Again, the filtering factor of buddy lists and contact circles makes it useful to busy executives.
What’s your experience? Are you having any luck with direct email marketing? Are people you meet and email slow to respond? Please comment below to share your thoughts.
Louis Gray wrote a good article on Google Buzz today. He hits on the key factors at the very end (3rd paragraph from the end). He says, “So how can Google determine relevancy with Buzz and start making sense of the social? Starting with GMail gives the company a major headstart, as they already know which contacts you trade e-mail with most often. They know how often you read e-mail from specific people, who you chat with most frequently by using the integrated GTalk feature, and they will often have data from you that provides your location, helping to tap that metric as well.”
This is definitely where the rubber meets the road. Depending upon how you use the web, your browser, social networks and the like, Google could potentially know loads of information regarding *who’s sharing what and how important are they are to you based on your emails, texts, IMs and voice calls.* This gets really scary when you consider someone like me who has almost all the Google tools integrated – including Gmail, Google Talk, Google Voice and their various extensions in Google Chrome.
Or not – I’m pretty exposed Web-wise, anyway. Of course, it could be very useful for productivity, time-saving, entertainment, buying short-cuts, etc. That’s the grand vision, for sure.
Interestingly, the only way Google doesn’t know what I’m sharing is if I post directly via Twitter, Facebook, Ping.fm, Hello.txt or some other social aggregation/post tool.
One thing I’ve noted.. Google could have gathered much more data about the content people share if they’d done a better job integrating “send link as email” within Chrome. Firefox does this really well. With Chrome you have to have an extension (apparently the 3rd pty one works best).. to pop open a gmail page and send. How much info are they missing when chrome users share using other tools because it’s not so easy with their own browser?
This will be a hot topic for some time to come.. what are your thoughts?
Online communication is becoming central to most of our social and business lives. Face it – a laptop and smart phone/iPhone are the tools we use these days. It used to be the traditional telephone and the mail box, but now we have a lot of different ways to “explode” our messages, “go viral” and keep large groups of people updated.
The problem is… it’s really difficult to figure out what tools to use and how to stick to some habits and processes.
Here are five of my favorite tools/processes (I don’t have any affiliation with these co’s – I’m just an online tinkerer):
1) Ping.fm – I use Ping.fm to update business messages to a variety of different social media/business platforms. I use the ping.fm toolbar to share stories that I find useful with my Twitter, Plaxo and LinkedIn groups. I find that some people are more active on certain networks, and I don’t want to have to manually update everyone separately. Ping.fm works great for this. I don’t update my primary Facebook page with this tool because those are mostly “social” friends in there. But I do have it set up to update my QualityWriter fan page.. which is really a nascent thing. There’s a good article about the best ways to set up Ping.fm here. Chris Brogan and ProBlogger Darren Rowse have good articles about how to structure your information sharing hub with a “home base” and “outposts.” They’re worth checking out for strategy purposes.
2) Eye.fi – This is an SD memory card that goes into my digital camera. It stores photos and has a built-in Wi-Fi antenna (I’m amazed at how small the technology is – looks just like a regular SD card!). Whenever I arrive at my local network/home wireless network, Eye.fi auto-downloads all my photos and videos to folders on my computer and automatically uploads them to my services (Kodak Gallery, Flickr, YouTube and Facebook) based on my settings. This thing is dynamite. This has changed my photo managing habits. I now try to delete all bad photos and videos off of my camera before turning it on near my wireless network… before the “auto-up-suckage”. Another way to handle this is to use the Protect feature on your camera. Only photos that are protected are uploaded to your folders and networks.
3) Google Voice – Google has a voice/phone service that integrates your landline and cell phone and texting into a unified “inbox”. I give out my Google Voice number to select clients and friends. When they call it, both my office phone and cell phone ring. It’s like a “Bat Phone.” From my laptop, I can SMS text my Gmail contacts (which are really all my contacts). This makes it easy to type out longer txts without doing the big-finger-blackberry thing. All messages go through my Google Voice inbox. They’re transcribed into text and emailed to me, too. I think I can have them sent as texts to my cell phone, too (not sure about this one). There are lots of other cool features – check it out, you’ll see.
4) ShareIn – If I want to update Facebook and/or Twitter friends about a story I’ve just read or a video I’ve just watched, I use ShareIn. This is a browser bookmarklet that gives you a “one click” way to do so. No more copy and paste. I wrote an article on how I came to embrace ShareIn here: How to Simplify your Social Media Life: The Pros and Cons of Posterous, Soup.io, ShareIn and FriendFeed. Ping.fm does this, too. But Ping.fm is better for touching all groups at once. ShareIn is good when you know exactly who you want to send something to – Twitter folks (who are more business for me) or Facebook (who are more social friends).
5) Posterous – This blog/hosting services is a quick and easy to share photos, thoughts, articles, sounds and videos with friends and associates. See the “How to Simplify” link above for more of my thoughts on Posterous. Essentially, I use Posterous as a place to update close family and friends with my videos and photos of family life. I wouldn’t do this kind of in-depth posting on Facebook, because I don’t want to spam a loose group of social friends with too much cuteness, kid soccer games and such. Posterous, however, is a great place to archive stuff and allow family members to catch up. My family and friends don’t need to have an account or log in any way. It’s just my Posterous URL. Simple… and I can update it via email or the browser toolbar bookmarklet. Easy peasy.
Check out these awesome services. They’re all free – except for Eye.fi, which is a one time cha-ching (mine cost $69.99 at Amazon – with free shipping – shipping is a little steep from the main eye.fi site).
Please let me know your tips and tricks too by commenting below and sharing this post with your networks and groups. Thanks. – Phil
Participating in social media activities is like participating in any other social activity. It can be as valuable as a lunch with the boss or as vapid as a breeze shooting session at the water cooler. Or vice versa.
What follows are some highlights and lowlights from a typical day of “connecting” in my life. I find the most value appears when I’m connecting with people who help me get my job done, of course. On the other hand, some exchanges are just plain fun even though they won’t help my business right away.
For starters, I posted a question to several of my LinkedIn contacts that I know have experience in the marketing and Web development field. I was looking for a WordPress developer that could help quickly launch Word Press Web sites. I’d need the person to “turn the lights on” every time I launch a new site or have a client that wants to transition to the flexible, powerful WP platform. I quickly found a great resource (in New Zealand of all places) that’s already helping out with a rather extensive client project. In the words of Jack Davenport on Britain’s Coupling, “result!”
Next, I read a bunch of links from thought leaders and link-sharers that I admire and trust. I use Seesmic Desktop and Twitter to do this. I follow quite a few people on Twitter, but Seesmic allows me to put them into groups (I think you can do this with TweetDeck, too). I have a group called “A-List,” and this is the place where I filter out those that consistently bring useful and entertaining links, ideas and articles. This can be a major time sucker, because if you follow a lot of the thought leaders on Twitter, there are a lot of tantalizing titles flying around. I try to limit my window for this activity to an hour or less. I like to take one action idea from each piece I read and get it into my calendar or task list. That way, I’m not just admiring articles. I’m actually using information to move my business forward. I came across an article yesterday that was really intriguing, How I got to the first page of Google thanks to ONE bookmarklet (by Zee on TheNextWeb). It shows you how to use Posterous and optimize WordPress for an ultimate SEO pick-me-up. I’ll be tinkering with those tools/tips today.
Then I moved into the realm of the unproductive. I put up some pictures of our kids’ soccer games [taking very little time, mind you: 1) Eye-Fi wireless SD card takes the pictures from the camera and automatically uploads them to my computer and Kodak Gallery, 2) A quick email puts the best ones on Posterous, which 3) automatically updates to Facebook]. Everyone’s updated in a matter of minutes, and I’ve only clicked a couple of times. The videos from the camera go to YouTube automatically, as well. It’s amazing.
Next, I commented on a bunch of inane but funny Facebook friend stuff. There were some good/ugly Kanye West/Michael Jackson funeral jokes and more of those silly Hitler videos from Valkyrie, where they put in subtitles about current events. I also caught up on friend photos, videos and whereabouts. I may score a ticket to the Cal-USC football game, as a result. That would be productive!
How do you use social media for fun and profit? Any stories or tips that are useful and insightful?
I’m going to start this post with a confession: I’ve been spending a lot of my non-work time with social media tools, platforms and networking sites. I caught a bug, so to speak. My latest obsession revolves around the ultimate tools for posting content, sharing ideas, sharing articles, and putting up personal photos and videos in the simplest, quickest way possible. I posted my findings about Posterous, FriendFeed, ShareIn and Soup.io in another article that’s linked here. This is ironic, by the way, because one of my recent posts is titled: Beware the Social Media Rathole and Re-Focus on 5 Key Business Disciplines
The point of this little riff, however, is to parse through some of the observations I’ve come across and to make some sense of it all in both a business and personal context. This exercise was originally just for me, but it occurred to me that you might benefit, as well.
One thing’s for sure – there’s *a lot* of chatter, anxiety and buzz out there with respect to everything social media/networking.
First, I want to set a baseline about communication and socialization and what it means to me. Then maybe we can move on to some of the curious things I’ve seen out in the “social networking” world.
I’ll start with an anecdote. When I was in high school, a friend and I started our own t-shirt company. I almost said “apparel company” there, but it wasn’t .. just one idea for a funny t-shirt (see image). The design was funny, interesting and relevant to the obsessions of our target audience – high school kids.
Could this have gone viral back in 1985?
It was about partying, status symbols (tongue and cheek to some extent – heck we were all growing up in one of the cheesiest, money-hungry cities in the U.S.), and college, the fortunate obsession of my peer group. So those elements were all in place.
And we sold thousands of t-shirts, sweatshirts and tank tops. Enough to keep me on the beach and sipping (moderation – ;^)) Coors Light well into my college years.
But I don’t think it was the design, the humor or the general theme that made the project work. Those elements had to be in place, of course. Yet, it needed something else.
We used to call the really popular, socially active kids “soc’s” back in the day (pronounced soshes, with the ‘o’ sounding like its name). I guess I was one of those. But I had hooks into a lot of different groups – including the geeks (I had an Apple II+ before anyone else), the mods (I loved the Jam, The Clash and Generation X), and the jocks (I played tennis but hung out with the water polo guys).
The t-shirt company needed that “soc” component. The word needed to be spread amongst a group of people who liked each other, shared the same values and perhaps wanted to see our project succeed. My buddy and I were in a good position for that. We liked a lot of people, and they liked us. In today’s online world, you might call it “friending” or “following.”
That little business was a mix of social and business.
“Business Life” bleeds into “Social Life”
Over the years (I’m 41 now), I’ve seen a swinging tide of communication and interaction with my own business that straddles this line between social and business. And I always come back to the same core idea: Business is social. That’s no revelation, I know. But it’s important. In my writing business, I work with people I know and like. I’ve met some of them in person. Some through email originally. Some via social media channels. I talk with them from week to week on the phone. We have common goals and interests when it comes to marketing copy, persuasion and content production.
My clients and I got to know each other in person, online and over the telephone wires (the last two are the same I guess). We sussed each other out, made sure our shoes were clean, made sure we didn’t smell bad and decided to do business with each other. That’s the way it works. You can’t take the social component out of it. And personal life bleeds into business life. They can see my Facebook stuff, if they like. But I run a clean show for the most part. I have a few wild friends that post off-color remarks on my pages from time to time, and I’ll put up a questionable humor link from time to time. But everything’s PG to PG-13 for the most part.
So, when I talk to people about Facebook, Twitter and the like, I often come back to the idea that business is social and the Internet is just another communication device. It’s no different than the pony express, the written letter, the telegraph, the steam boat or the telephone.
“But you lie, Phil!”
Yes I do. Somewhat. There’s a big difference between these new tools and the old, one-to-one communication channels like telephone, letter, email and personal conversation.
With those older “technologies,” the viral or word of mouth element is limited. If you call three friends and tell them some gossip or some useful business information, then your potential “megaphone” factor might extend the message out to another 40-80 people maximum, depending upon on the value or interest-level of the message and your own circle of friends. The people on the other end of the line have to be very motivated to call another person and extend your message, so 40 to 80 might be stretching it. The same thing applies to a letter, a newspaper clipping you mail, or an email (though emails are slightly more viral due to forwarding).
With something like a Facebook or Twitter post, however, your information can be immediately launched to massive networks within seconds. All it takes is one friend with several hundred Facebook contacts or a Twitter follower who has several thousands of followers in their network.
If I had a Twitter account back in 1984, I would have designed college sweatshirts for every community in Southern California and beyond, and then mined Twitter in reverse to spread the word. What does that mean? – “Mine Twitter in reverse..?” This subject is worth another post, but essentially, it’s about using tools like search.twitter.com to connect with people that have similar interests (and to target demographics). You can do similar mining on Facebook now, too. I might have even used AdWords to get the word out.
Who will go to bat for you?
Getting the word out is crucial, of course. And, to go viral you need strong connections to living breathing people. Here are the three keys to getting the word out:
The strength of your connections
The level of your engagement
The quality of your message
These also apply to your personal communications. The point here, however, is that it doesn’t matter what communication channel you use. Use your phone, a postage stamp, an email, Twitter or Facebook. But pay attention to those three keys. These are what will determine who will go to bat for you.
#1 has to do with who cares about you and your products/solutions. The root of this “caring” lies, interestingly, in the quality of care you direct toward your customers and contacts. If you care about your consumers/users/audience, then you’re putting yourself in their shoes every day, trying to figure out ways you can benefit them.
#2 has to do with the quality and quantity of your interactions. How many “touches” do you have with customers and friends/followers? Are you bugging people or offering them real value and insights? Are you answering their questions and trying to help them when your solution is not working out as planned?
#3 is an extension of #2. If you’re selling *anything* these days, you’re in the content production business. Ask any exec in upper management at Starbucks, and they’ll tell you that they’re in the content production and experience business. They nailed down coffee production, franchise and supply chain issues long ago. Their key differentiator is now “experience enhancement.” That means testing store designs and content (e.g. music selections and messaging on displays), engaging with “hub” or power/influencer users online and in the physical world at events, and constantly pumping out relevant information (whether it’s regarding philanthropy projects, music, books or coffee facts). Content has always been king, and you need to produce it well in order to make any kind of impact in this world. That goes for software companies, shipping companies, French fry peddlers, freelancers, web designers, lawyers, dog walkers… everybody.
Now, that said… ask yourself, “Would I rather make 500 phone calls? Or is it worthwhile building a network of Facebook and Twitter followers?” If I were selling sweatshirts, I’d opt for the latter. Multimedia advantages aside (e.g. demos, jpegs, and video showcasing the products), social media tools scale much more easily than phone calls, post cards or index cards on the bulletin board at the local coffee shop.
A strange world in transition
Ideally, social media allows you to make more connections with people and perhaps even make more meaningful, lasting connections – whether it’s for business or social purposes. But that’s not always the case is it? People resist participation, some only broadcast their views and others just don’t communicate all that well.
What follows are stories about three friends/associates of mine and how they perceive social media. Keep in mind, these people are like most of us (with the exception of the techie guy who’s deeply immersed in this social media scene). They want to find tools that are easy for them to use and don’t complicate their lives further. I can identify with that, and I’m not going take issue with them on a technology level. Many of the tools and “solutions” out there that are supposed to make communication easier are difficult to manage, and they don’t do what people want them to do (see my other post on Posterous, FriendFeed, Soup.io and ShareIn).
So, I’ll start with the simplest of stories. This guy is a friend of mine from high school. He’s what I’d call a Facebook power user. He’s constantly updating his status, posting photos and linking to articles of interest. One time I posted a story about Twitter on my Facebook feed, and he fired back, “I hate Twitter.”
People become religious about their tools and forget the underlying reality – it’s about communication. You see this with people who are passionate about Macs over PCs. Those who like blackberries over iPhones, etc. I’d agree that some tools are easier to use for particular types of people. For example, I like my Blackberry, because I can’t stand texting on touch screens. I think the same thing applies to my friend and his Facebook account. He’s committed to it. He’s all dialed in. And he’s used to the way it works. I can appreciate that.
I’m pretty sure that similar feelings accompanied the evolution of other technologies, as well. I have an aunt, for example, that can’t stand email. She prefers the pen, the ink and a stamp. People despise Amazon Kindles because they like the feel of paper pages. There was a time when a lot of people despised cell phones (many still do for a variety of reasons).
You don’t find many people who despise communication, however. And that’s really what we’re talking about. There are a lot of preferences out there. Some people prefer texting. Some Skype. Some IM. There’s an evolution of how a particular communication thread goes, too. For example, I like to text to set up plans and get simple questions answered, but I’ll go to voice when the conversation looks like it’s going to include more details or a personal tone/touch.
And, if I want to share something with a large group of people without “bugging” them, I choose social media tools like Facebook and Twitter. The people on the other end of the communication can deal with the information (or not) whenever they choose. The scalability factor is nice, and it’s easier for me to update a lot of people at once. This is different than direct communications like @-replies and one-to-one threads in Facebook, of course.
The second friend is a business woman who’s involved in media production and advertising for small businesses. She runs an “old school” magazine/dining guide that recommends restaurants in the local area. I call it old school because the publication is beholden to its advertisers – the old model for print publications. You sell ads and offer the buyers a carrot. If they buy ads, they get editorial. It makes for a very un-transparent, deceptive “guide.” We met up to discuss our respective marketing capabilities, and I mentioned social media, Twitter mining, Word Press blogs, etc. She said she was able to do any of those types of things for clients (with partner companies), but she doesn’t follow the technology trends and the new advertising models. She didn’t know what AdWords are, for example.
During our conversation, she pushed back really hard against any mention of social media or the value of social networking with respect to marketing. Personally, she felt that any new tools or practices (like using Twitter or Facebook) would just complicate her life. She found chasing email frustrating enough as is.
Her demographic for the dining guide is young adults, probably 18 to 35 – pre-children professionals that have time to go out and eat well, club, etc. I mentioned that this group increasingly avoids email in favor of social media communication. I repeated the popular line of Gen Y – “If I want to get a hold of an old person, I’ll use email.” Otherwise, they’re filtering their communications via social media tools and sites. This helps them avoid burdensome activities like chasing email all day. My friend wasn’t buying it. She was more interested in talking about four-color layouts for direct response post cards. I don’t have anything against those, but I thought we’d get beyond that.
And, I must say (Ed Grimley) that I concur with her about the frustration with yet another social media tool to use or site to join. For most of us, it’s exhausting keeping up with these things. People need easy-to-use, intuitive tools that offer shortcuts. Many don’t know about bit.ly and tiny.url and the like. They don’t have the Firefox plug-ins like UrlBarExt. They don’t want to cut and paste links. I think this is why the buzz around tools like Tumblr, Soup.io, FriendFeed, Posterous and ShareIn is so busy. These tools have their flaws, but they’re getting closer to an ideal social media sharing solution (for businesses and personal users). So, I’m hopelessly committed to this evolution. I can’t wait to check out Google Wave, for example. I’ve tried Mozilla’s Flock, and I use both TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop.
But I was taken aback by this friend’s position. While I could understand it completely, I just think it’s a bit naïve for a marketing professional to resist this. It’s like resisting using the phone for cold calling, using the yellow pages for prospecting or using the mail for advertising in days gone by.
My third friend is a big anomaly… a paradox of sorts. He’s someone I’ve partnered with in the past (on AdWords campaigns for joint clients). He’s a power user of Twitter, Facebook and all things social media. In fact, he frequently offers seminars and talks on the subject. His niche is in helping small businesses with Web marketing and positioning. He’s a big proponent of WordPress (I am, too).
I recently emailed him with questions about some social media issues I was wondering about. No reply. So I pinged him with an @ on Twitter and a DM. No reply. I emailed some more as additional ideas came up. Nothing. Then I commented on some of his Facebook entries to see if I could get a response there. Nope, nada.
It was very strange. Here’s someone who’s hook-line-and-sinker in the tank for social media, and he’s ignoring direct communications. Could be that I offended him. Maybe I owe him money (don’t think so). It’s possible that he’s a huge power user of these tools and that my pings have fallen through the cracks. I could imagine a scenario where my emails go to his spam folder, his Twitter @ feed is way too jammed and he ignores DMs (like a lot of Twitter folks do, due to spam).
It’s just weird that all this use of social media actually prevents communication. In this case, it’s probably time to just pick up the phone.
Circling Back – Be a Communicator, a Content Producer and a Content Filter
Ok, so what are the big take-aways here? Communication is the critical component to all of this. Despite my failures with friend #3, and the resistance of many to new communication channels – socializing and sharing ideas with people drives business and friendships. There’s nothing new there, but it’s an age old truth.
Also, people are at wildly different stages of adoption when it comes to communication tools. Heck, even folks in the marketing space still resist new modes of communication. People find tools that they like, and they stick with them because they’re comfortable and they’ve invested in some “build-out” of profiles, skill sets, etc.
So what should you do when it comes to using social media tools for better business and relationships? My recommendations are simple (even though I’m often guilty of not following them very competently).
Communicate clearly and often – Write better, produce better videos and blogs, and make those “touches” no matter what communication channel you’re using.
Filter content for your friends and followers – Use your authority, expertise and experience to help others make better decisions in their lives. Simple. The amount of information available is staggering today. People need trusted filters to make better decisions about the media they consume, the products they buy, and the people they associate with. With the right networks and associations, we’re moving toward more efficient, productive relationships. The tools are getting better, and people are catching on.
Focus on value – What do your clients, friends and associates want from you? When you figure it out, deliver that in big, heaping helpings. Don’t spam or bother. Instead, converse, comment and connect. Broadcast messages are becoming less attractive as these new media channels evolve. Interaction and caring are the keys.
Long post. Thanks for hanging with me! .. Fingers cramping… Must get coffee.
One of the biggest problems with social media communication is the drudgery of sharing links, making comments and updating groups.
Several sites aim to make this process easier… namely, Posterous, Soup.io, FriendFeed and ShareIn. I’ve tried all of them, and I’d say they’re “almost ready for primetime.” Each has value, and each has significant drawbacks.
This is a quick review that’s interested in answering the question: “How can these tools make my social media life easier to manage?” I’m not so much interested in questions like, “What’s the most powerful, flexible blogging platform?” That’s another issue together (and the answer is WordPress, btw).
I’ll start with ShareIn, since it’s the simplest tool of the three. Here’s how I use it: I opened an account, dragged their bookmarklet to my Firefox bookmark toolbar, adjusted my settings in ShareIn to update my Facebook and Twitter accounts, and then started selectively posting links, videos and photos to my pages via the bookmarklet. It’s useful, because if I’m reading an article and want to share it with friends without emailing it (a less invasive or interrupting method of sharing), I can do this quickly with a couple of clicks.
ShareIn places the appropriate links and images in my Twitter and Facebook feeds. I can do both at once or just do only Twitter or only Facebook. I notice that there’s a delay for image loading within my Facebook page. During this time a ShareIn logo sits in the position where the media image or photo should go. That’s slightly annoying.
When users click on the links, they’re sent to the article or media. Pretty direct and simple. There’s a ShareIn banner at the top of the web page that can be clicked closed. I’m calling it a banner, but it’s really just a strip at the top which allows users to continue to share the link on their social networks. It’s viral that way. When you close it, you’re presented with the original URL and page. Either way – open or closed – you have a nice big view of the article or media. Here’s an example of how a ShareIn link looks.
This does make sharing info easier on Twitter and Facebook. It works as advertised and has some nice back-end reporting features that show you the popularity of your posts and so forth.
I tried ShareIn because I was frustrated with Posterous’s quirky linking practices. But Posterous has some nifty features and advantages. It’s much more than ShareIn, even though it does some of the same kinds of things.
What do I mean by quirky Posterous linking? Here’s the deal. When you link to online media and articles with Posterous, the link you share is a link to your Posterous blog… not to the original article. That’s problematic for me. This linking process (and the Facebook/Twitter integration) is done via a bookmarklet in Firefox, like ShareIn, and your “share” settings within Posterous (they include more services than just Facebook and Twitter).
[BTW – Posterous is essentially a blogging service, like Soup.io, Tumblr and other blogs.. but it’s different, because it’s primarily designed to blog things that you send in via email. You send content (photos, videos, documents, etc.) to post@posterous.com, and the information is nicely posted to your Posterous blog. Mine is http://phildunn.posterous.com/. It’s quick and easy to set up. Check out the Posterous site to see more of the benefits and unique features. It’s pretty slick.]
The way Posterous links is problematic, because of the way my Twitter and Facebook followers consume information. In Facebook, for example, the peruser of my content sees a nifty graphic or photo related to the story I linked to, but the link itself goes to my Posterous page, and on that page there’s only a tiny little link that goes to the original article (it’s easy to miss it). The common experience on Facebook is to click on the link and arrive at the article or media. With Posterous posts, I’m forcing them to jump through a multiple click process – if they even see the link to the original content in the Posterous post. The same thing happens with the Twitter links that are created by Posterous.
I didn’t like that – so that’s why I ended up at ShareIn.
Posterous is great, however, for sharing family photos and videos.. and then having them automatically blast out to Twitter and Facebook friends. That feature works great. Posterous makes slick galleries of multiple photos and those show up really nicely in Facebook. If you post from YouTube that shows up nicely in Facebook, as well.
My deal is that I want one tool to make all these things happen with a minimum number of clicks. Is that so much to ask?
Soup.io is somewhat different animal. It’s like Posterous in that you can send emails to Soup.io, and they’re posted on your blog page. In a way, it’s like Posterous in reverse, however. With Soup.io, you *import* content into your blog page from other services like Twitter, FriendFeed and so forth (I didn’t see Facebook integration available). This reminds me. I want to talk a little about FriendFeed at the end of this article.. coming soon. Here’s what my Soup.io page looks like: http://phildunn.soup.io/ (admittedly, I don’t spend as much time here as I do other places).
When I set up “import” with Twitter and YouTube, for example, Soup.io grabs all my shared content on those services and shows them in my Soup.io feed. This happens automatically moving forward. I’ve yet to see a way to click the “post to soup” bookmarklet and have that content automatically update my Facebook and Twitter feeds.
So Soup.io is not quite there yet, either. All these platforms have nifty features, but they’re not quite optimal for a user like me who wants to share articles, videos, photos and personal blog info, links, etc.
I’d say ShareIn is the best option for posting online content to Twitter and Facebook. Posterous is great for posting personal photos and videos and having that propagate out to Facebook and Twitter automatically (along with a host of other platforms – you can even have it automatically update your own blog, like a WordPress blog or Blogger blog). Soup.io is good for bringing everything to one place… the problem is that you have to update all the other services separately, and that doesn’t make any sense at all to me. I want a place where I can post once and forget about visiting Twitter and Facebook until there’s some interest or discussion going on those particular platforms.
Now this brings me to FriendFeed, which is kind of a hybrid. It’s half Soup.io because it allows you to import content from a lot of your favorite sites, like Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Picasa, Flickr, Digg, YouTube, etc. And it’s half Posterous, because it allows you to automatically publish (export) your FriendFeed updates to Twitter. There are currently Facebook apps that appear to enable updating of Facebook via FriendFeed, but I’ve yet to see something that looks reliable (please let me know if I’ve missed something). The intriguing thing is that Facebook recently bought FriendFeed, so there’s bound to be better integration coming down the line… or a transformation of Facebook and the obliteration of FriendFeed. Who knows.
So there you have it. I’m sticking with ShareIn for most of my needs. But I am using Posterous for family stuff (photos, videos and such). One caveat: if you want all these things to work well together, you need to have your settings in each platform perfect. Otherwise, you’ll multiple post to different social media sites. And that’s annoying. It’s pretty easy, though, so I won’t get into it here.
UPDATE:The better way to accomplish this these days is with ping.fm or hellotxt.
One of my associates in the writing and marketing world just asked me how I link up all my social media accounts so I don’t have to trot around to each site/tool to keep everyone informed. At first, I started to scratch my head… How did I do that? It took place over several months, piecemeal. So I traced my steps, drilled into some menus and put it all together…
These will make your social networking/social media life easier:
